


The Betrothal Visit

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Emma - A Victorian Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-23
Updated: 2007-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Jones has finally consented to meet Young Master William's intended bride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Betrothal Visit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Khana

 

 

We are a wonder and a miracle. Even the English realize it; they stare wherever we go. In Atawar people not only stared, they came from miles around to see us. There had not been quadruplets born in the kingdom for a hundred years, and they were not so special as we are, being a boy and three girls, none alike. 

Our mother named us after the moon and stars, Arundhati, Vishaka, Chitra, and Swati, and when we were old enough she sent us to the king's court to be trained as companions for the young prince. To our mother, the distance from our village to the court was a long way; when we told her we would be attending the prince on his journey to England, she thought of it as twice as far as the court, or maybe even thrice, a whole week's journey. She was worried that we would get sea-sick, like we did on the prince's ornamental lake. We told her we had outgrown sea-sickness long ago, except for Vishaka, for whom we would pack stomach-soothing ginger teas, and promised to bring back gifts for our parents and all our cousins. We proved wrong about the sea-sickness -- a steamer, for all it looks so sturdy, rocks more on the high seas than a barge rowed by manservants on an ornamental lake, for all it looks so frail -- but we have not mentioned this in the messages we sent back home. We will tell our mother the story in person, when she can cluck her tongue and shake her head and smooth our hair back from our no-longer-distressed brows.

England is colder and, to tell the truth, less interesting than we expected. The sky is grim, the buildings are filthy, and we must be careful not to smile at men for fear they will take it amiss. (Vishaka, who is a flirt, smiles at the handsome ones when she thinks the rest of us aren't paying attention. She says no one has taken it amiss so far. She seems a little disappointed.) When we first came, we bought presents--English candies and English lace and penny postcards and strange machines and peculiar toys--but we grew bored with that long ago. Now we smoke opium and listen to gossip the servants think we can't understand and read books from the Jones' library. (Arundhati frowns over philosophy and Swati sighs over Gothic romances and Vishaka and Chitra giggle over texts on India, in the margins of which they sometimes inscribe corrections and sometimes inscribe outrageous lies.) 

As children, we attended the prince's English lessons with him, although we haven't been allowed to speak the language since one of his tutors said Arundhati had a better accent than the prince did. Vishaka and Chitra are certain the prince has forgotten the ban and Swati has never cared about it, although Arundhati thinks or pretends to think the prince is spiteful (she has always been vain of her learning, and frets that the prince does not admire it enough). William Jones has either forgotten we speak English (Vishaka and Chitra's opinion), is kindly forbearing to interrupt our game (Swati's opinion), or is simply too thoughtless to remember to mention the fact to anyone else (Arundhati's opinion).

Today the Jones house is abustle with excitement. There is not an unpolished piece of silver or statuette of crystal in the place; even the flagstones gleam. The maid Polly revealed the reason to us yesterday while laying the afternoon fire in rooms: Mr. Jones has finally consented to meet Young Master William's intended bride. He has created quite a scandal, the young master, by falling in love with a servant-girl. We feel the whole brouhaha demonstrates the folly of limiting men to a single wife apiece, although this morning Swati confessed, dreamy-eyed, to finding the whole affair romantic; she has had a crush on Master William for years, ever since he taught us how to play tennis when we were children, before the prince dragged him off to do something else. The prince has always been possessive of his treasures. 

We piled up in a room overlooking the great front drive to watch the carriage draw up. A footman assisted a lady down from the coach, a dark-haired woman too old to be the young master's bride, and then handed out another woman. The first woman moved with queenly self-possession; the second was much more timid, and from up above all we could see of her face was that she wore round spectacles.

Swati sighed.

"That was disappointing," said Chitra.

 _"Very_ disappointing," said Vishaka.

"I wonder if it is the girl we met," said Arundhati.

"What girl?" said the rest of us.

"The girl we met when we went on the elephant," Arundhati said. "When William got sick." We tittered, except for Swati, who disapproved of our heartlessness.

We decided to go downstairs to see. It was easy to tell that Mr. Jones had elected to meet the girl in the small drawing room, because hardly a servant in the place had not found an excuse to linger along the path between it and the front hall, even stern Mr. Stephens, the butler, and dignified Mrs. Clement, the housekeeper. In the absence of anyone with enough authority to scold them, the three youngest Jones children had crept up to the door to listen. They were so intent upon what they were hearing that we finally had to tap the eldest's shoulder to get his attention. He jumped in startlement, prodding his little sister, who complained loudly. 

"Shh," the elder boy said. "They'll hear you, Vivi!"

"Well, if you wouldn't poke me--"

The youngest boy stared up at us with round eyes. We stared back down. He looked remarkably like Master William had at his age. Arundhati reached past him to push the door open. She is the oldest and bravest of us.

"I say," the other boy began to protest, "you can't do that!" 

We strolled serenely into the room, although not too quickly to see his sister kick him in the shins and poke her head in after us. A middle-aged Englishwoman with pretty, faded blue eyes gaped at us like a fish; another woman, somewhat younger, tilted her head with a grace we recognized from the front drive. Mr. Jones, whom we remembered from his visits to the court at Atawar, appeared fit for a man of his age, except that at the moment he was dark red with rage. The young woman with the spectacles was peeking at William, and William was peeking at her, and against their pale skins their cheeks showed very pink.

It _was_ the girl from the elephant ride. She was beautiful in the English way, with an oval face and rosebud lips, but what we liked best about her were her eyes. When she glanced away from William, she met our gazes straight-on, as very few of the English do, and we could see that her eyes were a proper deep brown and very gentle. She smiled at us, very shyly, and we forgot not to smile back.

"What is the meaning of this?" Mr. Jones demanded. 

We drifted over to the table to examine the women's dresses more closely. The sleek, dark-haired women said in a low, smooth voice like cream, "Emma and I are not your only visitors, I see."

William jumped up belatedly and made us a distracted half-bow. "Mrs. Meredith, these are ..." He hesitated. "The companions of Prince Hakim Atawari, a dear friend of mine."

"You are not savages," Mr. Jones said in Hindi, very sternly. "You know better than to be here."

We mimed sad faces at him, but he showed no regret at ruining our fun. We drifted out of the room, murmuring our disappointment at Mr. Jones' cruelty just loud enough for him to hear. Miss Emma looked sad and sympathetic and slightly wistful, as if she might prefer to leave with us rather than to face the rigors of tea with Mr. Jones. We could not blame her.

When we reached our room, we realized we had swept up a passenger along the way. Small fists clutched Chitra's sari, and a bright yellow head craned around her hip. She rested a hand on Colin's head and he stared up at her and then leaned against her trustfully. 

"No one was paying him any attention," Chitra said defiantly. "If they don't want him, I'll take him."

"We can't _keep_ him," said Swati.

"He could be our page, like Titania's Indian page in the play by Shakespeare," said Vishaka. "Only in reverse."

"We will keep him for the afternoon," Arundhati declared. "No longer."

By the time the timid knock on the door came, an hour or so after we'd heard servants bellowing in the hall, we'd progressed to painting henna on Colin's hands and feet. It's not customary for young boys, but since he didn't know that, he lay patient under our hands. Swati kept him distracted by reading to him from an adventure by Mr. Stevenson. She thought he would like it best of the books we had at hand. 

It was Miss Emma at the door. "I don't know if you've heard," she said, stammering slightly, "I wondered if perhaps you'd seen--oh, Colin!"

Colin beamed at her, smiling wide and happy, and that decided us. We tugged her in. "Wait here," Swati told Colin in English, placing the book face-down. 

"Don't move," Chitra called. 

"Let the paint dry," Vishaka added.

"Oh, where are we going?" Miss Emma said, a little worried, but not resisting our hands.

"You'll see," Arundhati said.

We sent Colin to fetch his oldest brother when we were done. We had dressed Miss Emma like a bride, in fine transparent silks and a gold veil, and we had painted the fortunate henna on her hands and arms and feet, and we had taken down her hair and brushed it a hundred strokes. She was still and dazed for the rest of it, but protested about the hair: "Oh, no, it isn't proper." Arundhati promised we put it back up later, fastening her favorite necklace around Miss Emma's neck. We gave her back her spectacles so she could see what the henna patterns looked like, but made her take them off again before we allowed William in. 

The reaction was all we could have hoped: he and Miss Emma could hardly decide whether to look at each other or away, and their cheeks were a deep, dark red. We all sighed a little at the way they looked each other, even Arundhati. 

"They're like Krishna and Rukmini," murmured Swati. 

"Only much paler," said Vishaka. 

"Well done," said Chitra to Colin, taking his hand. He stared up at her in adoration.

We think we will stay for the wedding.

 


End file.
